Tucker's Progress, As Well As Any Other Animal-Related Commentary I feel Like Sharing

Wednesday, 4 June 2008

Triumph with Wormer

I'll start this by recounting past events:

Previously, when I've gone out to worm Tucker, a long and arduous battle has ensued involving extensive head tossing from her, and continuous frustrated attempts from me to hold her still enough to cram the stupid wormer tube into her mouth. This usually resulted in Tucker's face and most of my arm being smeared with wormer, and very little actually being administered properly down her throat.

On to recent events:

I went out last weekend to give the horses their periodic worming, and I decided to start with Tucker to get the expected battle out of the way. I went into her pen, and intially she wouldn't even let me get ahold of her halter. It took some coaxing to calm her enough for me to grab ahold of it, but she immediately started throwing her head (as I expected) when I attempted to put the wormer in her mouth. This time, however, I decided to try a new tack. I always had figured she was reacting to the smell of it, and parking it next to her muzzle wouldn't help, but just for kicks I rested the wormer tube against the side of her face and talked to her calmly and scratched her face. Then I attempted to give it to her. She threw her head too much. We repeated this exercise several times over the course of a few minutes, but each time I noted that she was fighting my slightly less when I tried to put the tube in her mouth. Finally, she held still enough that I was able to put it in her mouth and push the plunger. Unfortunately, this is when I discovered that I had forgotten to move the stop so it didn't prevent the plunger from moving. I remedied that and had to repeat the muzzle resting trick a couple more times, then I put it in her mouth and dispensed the wormer, completely problem free. She had VERY little on her face, I had NONE on my arm, and she didn't spit any out. I was SO STOKED about this because getting her to calmly allow me to give her wormer was a huge step in the training process! I threw my arms around her neck and gave her lots of scratching, then I gave her her dinner and it was all done. Talk about a giddy victory!